Denzel Washington’s wife was literally knocked off her feet during one of her son’s recent American football games – after getting in the way of another player as she celebrated her boy’s first touchdown of the season. John David Washington is a running back for the Sacramento Mountain Lions and his parents recently flew out to California from New York to catch him in action.

But his mom Pauletta became too caught up in the action and ran down from the stands to the sidelines as the 26 year old scored a touchdown during the game – unwittingly standing in the path of a charging teammate.

Pauletta was left lying faced down on the field after the clash, but she managed to leap back to her feet to continue celebrating her son’s achievement.

Showing off video footage of the incident to TV viewers during an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday, the Training Day star laughed off the mishap and assured the audience his wife was just fine.

Explaining the run down, Washington said, “You’ll see his mom get clobbered, in the lower corner, watch, boom! A woman gets hit down there… He scores a touchdown but his mother ran down the field with him. His mother, she doesn’t see (player number) 53 coming, boom!

“(But) she jumped up faster than the guy did. She loves her son so much, she didn’t see the guy coming, all she could see was her baby! …And she’s fine. She bounced right up. I said you should have stood over him and taunted him, ‘You little punk!'”